Data Center Lighting and Efficiency

As data center operators, engineers and architects consider different ways to make their data centers more efficient, often the last areas they consider is data center lighting. While lighting only comprises 3 to 5 percent of a data center’s energy load, it’s one of the easiest areas to address and one that will help take a data center with good Power Utilization Effectiveness (PUE) to one with great PUE.

With that in mind – one of the standard ways to optimize the delivery of resources is to deliver them “on-demand.” Basically, provide the resource when it’s needed, not supply it continually. The same can be applied for lighting. In this whitepaper from CommScope, we see how the most efficient way to provide light in a data center is to use it precisely when and where it is needed.

This is effectively a lights-out data center approach. While many data center operators believe they operate a lights-out type of facility, in actual practice, they do not. In facilities with this type of policy, lights are turned on manually across a large swath of space when a technician enters the racks to get to a particular small section of the site, such as an aisle.

Moving forward, the data center will have to operate as efficiently as possible. This means intelligently controlling lighting as well. Fortunately, there is an inexpensive tool to determine exactly how much lighting energy is used in their data center. This device is a HOBO U9 Light On/Off Data Logger.

By placing the HOBO in the data center an operator can track precisely how much lighting is used over a period of time. This empirical information can be used to guide data center operators to select the approach that works best for them.

Download this whitepaper todayto learn how by combining multiple sensors for motion, lighting, energy metering, and temperature in a single device, CommScope Redwood’s sensor can be deployed at each and every light fixture, creating a dense grid with coverage for every 100 square feet of building space. Here’s the cool part – this follow-me lighting and efficiency control method can scale and become distributed with you systems.

Basically, you’re deploying a solution which collects sensor information and extends the information to other systems to deliver a platform that provides an optimally efficient way to improve productivity, enhance efficiency and reduce energy costs.

About the Author

Bill Kleyman is a veteran, enthusiastic technologist with experience in data center design, management and deployment. His architecture work includes virtualization and cloud deployments as well as business network design and implementation. Currently, Bill works as the Vice President of Strategy and Innovation at MTM Technologies, a Stamford, CT based consulting firm.

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